I hear the oriole's always-grieving voice, And the rich summer's welcome loss I hear In the sickle's serpentine hiss Cutting the corn's ear tightly pressed to ear. And the short skirts of the slim reapers Fly in the wind like holiday pennants, The clash of joyful cymbals, and creeping From under dusty lashes, the long glance.

I don't expect love's tender flatteries, In premonition of some dark event, But come, come and see this paradise Where together we were blessed and innocent.

I saw my friend to the front doorI stood in the golden dust.Momentous sounds issuedFrom the little belfry close by.Tossed! Such a made-up word-What am I, a flower or a letter?But my eyes already gaze grimlyInto the darkened looking glass.

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,to look at the sky and pray to God,and to wander long before eveningto tire my superfluous worries.When the burdocks rustle in the ravineand the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droopsI compose happy versesabout life's decay, decay and beauty.I come back. The fluffy catlicks my palm, purrs so sweetlyand the fire flares brighton the saw-mill turret by the lake.Only the cry of a stork landing on the roofoccasionally breaks the silence.If you knock on my doorI may not even hear.

Black and enduring separationI share equally with you.Why weep? Give me your hand,Promise me you will come again.You and I are like highMountains and we can't move closer.Just send me wordAt midnight sometime through the stars.

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,over a black mountain, in his giant track,while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:"It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,at the empty windows set in the tall housewhere sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."A single glance: a sudden dart of painstitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .Her body flaked into transparent salt,and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seemtoo insignificant for our concern?Yet in my heart I never will deny her,who suffered death because she chose to turn.

Lying in me, as though it were a white Stone in the depths of a well, is one Memory that I cannot, will not, fight: It is happiness, and it is pain. Anyone looking straight into my eyes Could not help seeing it, and could not fail To become thoughtful, more sad and quiet Than if he were listening to some tragic tale.

I know the gods changed people into things, Leaving their consciousness alive and free. To keep alive the wonder of suffering, You have been metamorphosed into me.

I have enough treasures from the pastto last me longer than I need, or want.You know as well as I . . . malevolent memorywon't let go of half of them:a modest church, with its gold cupolaslightly askew; a harsh chorusof crows; the whistle of a train;a birch tree haggard in a fieldas if it had just been sprung from jail;a secret midnight conclaveof monumental Bible-oaks;and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting outof somebody's dreams, slowly foundering.Winter has already loitered here,lightly powdering these fields,casting an impenetrable hazethat fills the world as far as the horizon.I used to think that after we are gonethere's nothing, simply nothing at all.Then who's that wandering by the porchagain and calling us by name?Whose face is pressed against the frosted pane?What hand out there is waving like a branch?By way of reply, in that cobwebbed cornera sunstruck tatter dances in the mirror.